3.5 – Panacea

Living in exile, Romana uncovers the greatest threat that Gallifrey has ever faced. One that might cause the Time Lord race to become extinct.

1 Comment

Styre
on May 9, 2016 at 1:27 AM

GALLIFREY: PANACEA

As with all the other Gallifrey plays, I sat down before writing my review of Alan Barnes’ “Panacea” with the fantastic summaries at The Dr Who Guide to refresh my memory of the script. And, sadly, as with most of the other Gallifrey plays, I found myself bored and unable to recall many of the events I had heard not two days previously. I know I’m rejecting the entire concept of the series when I say things like this, but seriously: when did Gallifrey become so neutered? We’re to the point, in the fourteenth play, of the Time Lords being worried that they don’t have enough money and planning to sell their temporal weapons! Meanwhile, the dogma virus from the first season returns, and now it’s free and — sigh — turning people into zombies. 35% of the population, in fact, something that seems to have happened under everyone’s noses during the chaos of the war. So, with Gallifrey falling — and, by the way, there’s no mention of the destruction of the Matrix, something that turned out to be totally insignificant — we start to seed oblique hints about the new series Time War, with references to Daleks and foreshadowing of a great upcoming conflict. Braxiatel returns, stealing the entire Gallifreyan bio-data archive so that he can reconstruct the entire population after they all die. Convenient, no? Of course, the alternative is to eliminate the Time Lords’ ability to regenerate, which would prevent them from turning into zombies. And what does Romana choose when faced with this impossible decision? Nothing, conveniently, as the decision is taken from her. Fortunately, she has another plan up her sleeve to stop the impending disaster, but, as you’d expect, the series ends before she can say what it is.

When Big Finish’s Sarah Jane Smith series ended on an apparent cliffhanger, I loved it: the final scene was open to several different interpretations, and a resolution would have cheapened the effect. The Gallifrey series, however, ends abruptly in the middle for no reason whatsoever, as though the production team just got tired of making it. Fitting, though, because I’d long since grown tired of listening to it.

All in all, a series which didn’t exhibit much potential in the first place failing to live up even to that, withering into nonsense and dying a slow death. Fourteen plays later and all I feel is irritation.